PENDULUM
by AwesomeFanFictionAuthor
Summary: Swinging back and forth between good and bad, between optimism and despair, between surreal fantasy and hollow reality. That's how it is now. That's what we have to do to survive.
1. Book 1 Chapter 1

**I said I would never ship Odd with an OC, well I didn't, because this story is not mine. Not even a little. This story belongs to the lovely Feather, on tumblr her name is raspberryferret, she is awesome, go follow her stuff. She didn't want to post this because this site doesn't like her but I thought it was an epic story with epic characters, so I took the original comic book script format and typed it into this. These are all her words, all I did was make it fit to story paragraph format. Neither of us own Code Lyoko. Feather owns Feather and the shifter race of homo shifterus shifterus.**_  
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**It's in Feather's pov. Enjoy!  
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_Prepare yourself. What you're about to see is our world in the near future. It isn't what you want to think, though. Xana didn't cause this. It was only after Xana's fall that this world became a living Hell. It was then that PHOENIX rose._

_ It was then that our lives changed for the worst._

In this world, the apocalypse had fallen. I was in France, my home, or...what's left of it. I was out on a supplies run. The streets were dark, wet, and disgusting, with chunks of it missing here and there. The buildings around here were in bad shape too, broken windows, graffiti. This was considered a place that was well off. The world was literally in ashes. Here, there were people surviving. Here, the population hadn't been completely wiped out by disease carried through this greenish gray haze we breathed into our lungs and called air. Yes, the atmosphere was more pollution than actual air now, and the stuff was so thick you couldn't tell day from night.

The whole situation made everyone slightly...savage. People stayed in places and hoarded supplies. When they ran out they'd steal from other people. I could see a gang assaulting a guy...nobody was helping him. I would have but I had more important things to take care of. I was taking care of the people who actually stuck together and wanted to survive, and the people who wanted to survive came to Kadic.

Who was the one behind all this? No, it wasn't Xana. We killed Xana, but it turns out he wasn't the real threat. Xana had been nothing compared to what had risen from his ashes.

It's name was PHOENIX. In six short months this computer virus turned real had popped up from nowhere, waged a war against humans, won, and brought about the apocalypse.

Despite all the things living in this world had caused, all the scars and scratches and dirt, people still said I looked pretty. Me with my golden hair pulled back in a ponytail, not the most flattering of hairstyles, but practical, and my golden eyes...er...eye. My right eye had been shot out, there was a large scar over it. Even with all the bandages, they told me I was pretty. Pretty wasn't a concern of mine right now.

People kept saying it was over, that we were all doomed, and I couldn't blame them. I feared the human race was now an endangered species. My name is Feather Pandora Shade. I didn't believe the people who said this was the end. I believed this was only the beginning.

I jumped up from my crouching position onto the top of an abandoned building, burlap sack in hand. I jumped through a hole in the roof and landed on a rug in the living room of a formally nice house. The sudden disturbance kicked up a cloud of dust. I coughed slightly and looked around, then proceeded to walk cautiously down a hallway. This house was abandoned, most in France were, but this was one of the fancier ones. The people in this house thought they were coming back, so they boarded up their doors and windows tight. I could easily break through, but really it was just easier to bust in through the roof.

This place...I didn't like this place. It smelled like death. The wolf in me wanted to run.

I opened the door at the end of the hallway. It was a bathroom, perfect. Bathrooms had useful things. I knelt down by the sink and opened the cupboard. Inside there were thick rolls of white bandages and bottles of stuff. The only label I saw was "bactine" as I stuffed the entire contents of the cupboard into the burlap sack.

I hate to think that the people who used to live here didn't have time to get this stuff...So I didn't. I needed this stuff, and so did my friends. With my job done, I exited the bathroom, went back into the living room, crouched, and jumped through the hole in the roof I got in through.

From that jump, you might be able to guess I'm not entirely human. I'm a Shifter, a breed of superhuman that Xana created to try to dominate the world. I turned against my creator though, and joined my friends in the war against him. That was how Xana fell. That was how PHOENIX rose.

I leapt off the roof of the house and grunted as I hit the ground, wincing. I wasn't invincible, though. I could still die. It was just a lot harder to kill Shifters than it was to kill normal folk. I stood up and flattened against the wall of the house next door. I had to make sure everything was safe. You couldn't be too safe around here. I looked around the corner, seemed to be all clear, so I took a few steps into the thick weedy lawn of the house. Then I sprouted wings and flew toward home base.

Shifter stood for shapeshifter. I could change into whatever I liked, whatever I imagined. It didn't even have to be a real thing. I could make myself look and sound like any person I wanted to. I could also read minds and occasionally see into the future. Those were my two main abilities, along with the shifting thing.

Some people even went as far as to call my kind angels, maybe we were. Even while Xana was around, some of his Shifters had turned against him. I was the first, maybe I inspired them, I don't know. After Xana, the ones who hadn't turned against them had nothing to do. They finally chose to do some good. Well...most of them. The ones that hadn't, though, were killed by the ones that fought for freedom. There weren't many of us left after PHOENIX. I feared our numbers may have been smaller than that of humanity's by at least half, and it was dropping.

Finally I could see our base. I came in for a landing and retracted my wings. This place wasn't in much better shape than most other buildings in town. There were broken windows and some of the bricks that made up the corners of the building had fallen away and left holes. This was where me and my friends lived, as well as most of the students of Kadic. Most of the day students were either dead or missing, except for a few. The boarding students...well they might have never seen their families again. Before PHOENIX, this was a school called Kadic Academy, but now it was more of a shelter for the children who went there. The adults were helped a bit by some of my fellow Shifters. I'd called them to protect our home.

I walked into the building through one of the holes in the corner, which had a blanket over it in an attempt to keep the place warm. I walked into a hallway, the walls were faded and cracked, bits of the ceiling tiles had fallen. The hallway was deserted besides me. I came to a door, there was a red cross on it, but some of it had been scratched away. It was the door to the infirmary. I walked in.

The infirmary was a massive room that used to be the school's gym. There were a few beds toward the back, some of them sealed off by curtains hanging from the ceiling. Most of the school's remaining inhabitants were curled up on the floor on blankets. Their clothes were ratty and dirty and they were all a little thin. A couple of Shifters tended to the crying ones, you could tell they were shifters because of their wings. There were also kids with normal looking animals.

All the animals in this building were other Shifters in animal forms. This helped keep the children calm, because they had a friendly, furry huggable thing to cuddle. The rest of the Shifters were out hunting or foraging for food.

I walked into the infirmary, burlap sack in hand. Then Opal came running up to me, she was a vixen with turquoise eyes.

"Feather! Did you find anything?" Opal asked.

"Anything that was canned was rotten, way past their expiration dates. Didn't smell right, either." I replied.

"Oh no! What are we going to do when we run out?"

"I don't know. We'll think of something...Are Shock and Violet back yet?"

"Yeah, Shock just got back, he took out a moose in the forest. Violet is still out."

"A moose? That'll feed half of us. Was it big?"

"It was huge." Opal replied.

"Great. Let me know when Violet gets back, ok?"

"Uh hunh." Opal said, then walked off towards a crying 6th graders.

I didn't like to think this was how they were going to live for the rest of their lives. I wished this wasn't reality.

I moved on toward the beds near the back. Kids in casts and bandages were in each of the beds, some of them were sick, most were asleep. I walked past these to the bed at the very end of the line, it was closed off. I parted the curtain and saw Odd in the bed. He was asleep and shirtless, his hair was ratty and disheveled. Yolanda was too busy looking at Odd to notice I had entered the room. She was worried about him...We all were.

"Knock knock..." I said. Yolanda looked up at me, relieved.

"Thank the Lord you're back. Did you get anything?" She asked. I dug through my burlap sack to find the supplies I had for her.

"Not much was really left. I found a few rather large rolls of bandages, some surgical tools from the hospital, and a lot of bactine and sanitizers." I said, finding the items I mentioned and putting them on a small table near the bed.

"Every little bit counts, Feather."

"Yeah, I know." I looked at Odd, he was still sleeping. "How is he?"

"Not much better, I'm afraid. He's under some anesthesia Charlotte brought back, but that's really all I could have done till you got back." I sighed.

"I just hope he'll get through this. I know he's tougher than he looks, but...he's only human." He worried me so much...

"Can you get his wounds wrapped up? I have to go check on another patient."

"Yeah, I can." I said, Yolanda left. I pulled out one of the rolls of bandages and a bottle of sanitizer. I went next to Odd's bed and pulled the covers down a little bit. His chest was a mess of torn skin from four gaping claw marks. The blood had been cleaned away. It was a few days old, but wasn't infected. I began to wrap it up.

This was Odd. He wasn't in great shape. PHOENIX had monsters that roamed the world, and one of them had gotten him. I hated to see him like this. I hadn't been there when it happened. I was grateful for that, I guess. I hadn't been there to see the blood.

Blood didn't bother me, not under normal circumstances. But I loved Odd with all my heart, and he loved me back. It was thanks to him that I was standing here today. He and I couldn't survive without each other. Which was why I'd get so freaked when I saw his blood.

I finished wrapping the wounds and stashed what was left of the bandages back in the burlap sack. I kissed his forehead, then walked out of there, leaving him to sleep. I headed back out to the area with all the children and looked at them all. I wasn't the kind of Shifter that Opal was. I didn't care for the kids. I was one of the Shifters that did a lot of everything else.

I'm not the cuddly type.

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**Isn't she awesome? The child that wrote this originally and thought of the character and drew the picture for the cover is known as Feather or Oddi or raspberryferret o-o please to be reviewing, I'll pass them along to her :33  
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**By the way, in case you didn't pick up on this Vixen=female shifter  
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	2. Book 1 Chapter 2

**Here I am again, updating pendy. This story does not belong to me, neither does code lyoko. They belong to raspberryferret/oddi/feather and moonscoop respectively. Hope you enjoy it!**

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I sat on the cracked and broken steps of what was left of the school. I was looking at a crystal hanging around my neck. It glowed faintly.

Violet hadn't come back yet. I worried about her. She was a good fighter, but she had a weakness. Her leg broke a few years ago and healed badly, leaving her crippled. She insisted on fighting though. She was also one of the oldest generations of Shifter. I was one of the latter, Generation X, to be exact. It was the most mysterious and by far the strongest generation. Violet was a Generation D, one of the last surviving. She wasn't as...advanced as I was.

I sensed the patrol group coming back. A group of five Shifters came in for a landing. Their leader was named Blade, he was slightly taller than me. I stood and looked at them.

"There you are. Find anyone?" I asked.

"If by that you mean corpses, we found several." Blade replied.

"Anyone alive?"

"Well..." Blade trailed off.

"Well...?"

"We found another Shifter. One of the latter Generations."

"Which kind?"

"Generation Y."

"...That's the unstable one. Where is she?"

Violet was a part of this group, she was tall and pretty, the only thing wrong was her twisted leg. Violet came up to me and spoke.

"Well, actually she found us."

"What?" I asked.

"We had no choice but to kill her. She came at us with a gun." Blade said, I sighed.

"There's so many who don't know we can help them."

"We made it quick if that's any consolation..." Blade said.

"That's not what I'm worried about. Was anyone hurt?" I asked.

"Yeah. Zara took a bullet to the chest. Not a bad one, only grazed her heart. She'll be fine." Violet said. I peeked behind her and Blade and saw Zara. She was a young looking vixen. She smiled and wiggled her fingers in a wave despite the hole in her chest that's bleeding badly. I rolled my eyes.

"That girl scares me sometimes." I said to myself, then, to the rest. "Anything else?"

"'Fraid not." Blade replied.

"Well get inside. Lillian can get Zara patched up in no time." I said. The group of Shifters walked off, but I stayed inside.

We were lucky to have found Lillian when we did. He was badly wounded when we'd found him, but when he recovered, he showed that one of his abilities was to heal other Shifters. He was the only Generation B still alive. I didn't know what it was like to be the only one of your Generation left. I was an X, and the X Generation was very common. Opal and another Shifter, Kendra, were Generation Xs also. Xs all had different abilities defining them. No other Shifter could see into the future like I could, and we were always learning of new powers we had. I still had about a dozen left to make themselves known to me.

I looked up at the sky. Shadows appeared...more Shifters. I smiled as they landed, the first of them being Riot.

"Hey, Riot. Find much?" I asked.

"A few wild plants in the woods, a deer or two..."

"Well...it'll do." I replied, and with that he and the other two left.

Riot wasn't always on our side. Actually, he was the one who managed to managed to torture me by tearing skin off and not kill me. I owed it to him, though, after he joined us, he put his skills to use. It was always nice to have a guy that could create fire out of nothing. Kept the kids warm on cold nights. He had also made us reliable weapons with that skill. I walked into the building after them.

The end of the world as we knew it could change the heart of even the coldest killed. I know the day my world seemed to end...my heart changed too.

I stood by Odd's bed, he was still asleep, but I was just looking at him, worried...I tried to hold back tears...

There was a knocking at the door, I looked up and saw that is was Ulrich there.

"Hi Ulrich." I said, he smiled weakly and stood next to me.

"How's he doin?" he asked.

"Well, he's not in the best of shapes. He's under anesthetics now."

"Can't Lillian do anything"

"Lillian can only heal other Shifters." I said, Ulrich sighed,

"He's gonna get through this, right? He's my best friend."

"I know. He's strong, stronger than he looks. He better get through it."

"I know. Odd isn't weak, that's for sure."

Odd stirred from his sleep, moaned, and opened his eyes a bit.

"Nghhh...What...where am I?" he said.

"You're in the infirmary. You were hurt." I replied.

"Oh...So is that why my chest is killing me?" Odd murmured drowsily, then looked past me to Ulrich. "Hi Ulrich."

"Hi."

"Yeah, that's why." I answered.

"So I'm gonna be here for a while?" Odd asked.

"Probably. You're going to get better though. I mean, you're awake now, aren't you?"

"Awake and feeling like crap seem to have a connection." Odd said.

"Yeah. We had to keep you under anesthetics for a few days while it healed. It's getting better though." I said.

"Well, at least some of us are." Odd replied.

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I sat at the top of one of the dead trees next to Kadic. I looked out on the world. My face was hard, like a stone. This life was a hard one. Sometimes you'd wonder what the point of all of it was. Then you'd remember everything you had, even if it wasn't much. You'd remember how much everything was worth to you. After something like this...the value of everything increased tenfold.

Well, that's what I thought. If what you had didn't seem like enough, then look at what you already had and suddenly it made you realize how lucky you really were.

I looked down and in the distance, squinting. There was a gang of older guys that had a girl cornered in an alley. I tensed. Sometimes, things that weren't yours still had value. Value wasn't what you made of it. It's what you knew of it. Days like these, every life, no matter how small, couldn't afford to be wasted.

I shifted into bird-person form, spread my wings, and jumped off the branch I was sitting on. I dived for the gang, kicking one of them in the head on the way down. I landed between the gang and the young girl who was pressing herself against a dumpster. The guys looked confused for a second, then they moved in. I waited for them to get closer.

"Well, looks like our little friend has a guardian angel." the first gangster said sinisterly.

"Just come closer. You'll see how angel-like I am." I replied.

"Come on precious, we ain't gonna hurt you..." the second one said, pulling out a knife. All this succeeded in doing was pissing me off further.

"You guys got a lotta guts, you know that? Too bad you'll be coughing them up after I kick you." I said.

The first guy leapt for me, but I dodged and delivered a kick to the guy's abdomen. He fell, screaming in pain. The rest of the guys looked a bit scared, but moved in anyways. I just stood there and waited.

"What, are you scared?" I asked.

"Shut up your face, chick. You're ours." The third guy said.

"I don't think so!"

I charged at them, punched the third guy in the face. I kicked the fourth guy, but he managed to grab my foot and twist, pulling me to the ground. The fifth guy pounced on me while I was down and kicked me in the ribs. I retaliated by grabbing the foot of his that was on the ground and pulling it out from under him, which made him fall. I leapt to my feet just as the second guy threw his hasty serrated blade at me and it buried itself in my shoulder. I stumbled back.

"OW!" I yelled.

"'Ow'? That's IT? What are you, some kind of super kid or something?" The second guy exclaimed. Now I was just really pissed.

"You have no freaking idea."

I pulled the knife from my shoulder, which was followed by a gush of blood, I winced and groaned. I threw the knife back at the second guy with such precision that he was pinned to the wall behind him by his shirt sleeve. I wheeled around and punched the fourth guy in the face as he was trying to creep up behind me. The third and sixth guys, who had recovered, pushed me against the gritty wall of the building, teeth bared in human snarls. The third guy had a strangle hold on me and the sixth guy reached for my butt. Pervert. I lashed out with my legs and nailed the third guy in the face. I was let away from the wall while the third guy fell unconscious. The sixth guy punched me, dropping me to the ground, he straddled me, pinning me to the ground. He pulled out a knife and pressed the blade against my throat.

"Hold still and be a good girl and maybe I'll let you live!" He said.

"Don't you DARE do what you're thinking. I can still hurt you, moron!" I replied.

"Oh yeah? How? You're just a weak chick." He said.

"Like THIS!" I yelled. I grabbed the arm that was holding the blade with both hands and snapped the bone in his arm. The guy screamed and fell away. I got to my feet and turned to the girl, who was watching with huge eyes.

"You ok?" I asked her.

"I-I don't know...you...you saved my..." The girl burst into tears and knelt in front of me.

"You got a name?" I asked. The girl nodded but was sobbing hysterically, she managed to get out the answer, though.

"I...I'm Cora."

"Listen, Cora, I can help you. I know a place with plenty of food. You gotta come with me, ok?" I said. She thought for a moment. Then she just gave me a big hug and sobbed into my shoulder. It surprised me for a moment, but then I picked her up and started to head back to Kadic.

This was what we did a lot of the time. There were a lot of kids left without parents, and they didn't have anyone to protect them. It was a miracle she'd lived this long.

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**Please please review and let me know how it is ^^ **


	3. Book 1 Chapter 3

**Hai hey everyone enjoy zeh chapter I don't own this I didn't write it Oddi did. **

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I finally arrived back at Kadic with Cora. I carried her the whole way but I didn't think she minded. I looked down at her to see her reaction, she was looking around in wonder.

"Where are we?" Cora asked, barely whispering.

"This is where we live." I responded.

"There are other kids with wings?"

"Yep. And lots of kids without 'em, too. We'll take care of you, don't worry." I carried Cora through the hole in the wall, through the hallway, and into the infirmary. Her eyes grew wide as she got a look at the place. Opal spotted us and ran towards us.

"Who's this?" Opal asked, gesturing to Cora.

"This is Cora." I answered. "I found her being attacked by a gang."

"Is she hurt?" Opal asked, then turned to Cora. "Are you hurt?"

"She isn't as far as I know, but take care of her, ok?" I set Cora down on the floor and knelt down in order to look her in the eyes. "Cora, this is Opal. She's one of my best friends. She can get you some food and something to drink." Cora looked at Opal.

"Ok." then she looked at my wounds from the fight. "You're hurt. Are you gonna cry?"

"It's not that bad." I said, giving her a smile. "You'll be safe here, I promise." Cora nodded. The poor girl was obviously scared and would probably trust anyone at this point, thank gods I found her before someone who would have abused her did. Opal gently lifted Cora.

"Let's get you washed up, huh?" Opal said, carrying Cora off. Cora looked back at me and smiled faintly. I smiled back, then turned to walk down the hall. My wound throbbed and I winced, then put pressure on it. That fight was a reminder of just how not invincible I am. I could take a lot more than any human, but it was still painful. Shifters could heal real fast, so the pain didn't usually last more than a day or so...Lillian could have probably healed me, but I didn't want him to exhaust himself. He'd done a lot of healing lately. I didn't want him to do more than he needed to.

I walked down the hall with the beds and came to a shelf with medical stuff we'd collected from around the city. I took a roll of bandages and a knife from a sheath on my belt. I cut the fabric of my shirt off of my wound, then rested. This was a pain in the butt, but it had to be done. I unraveled a long strip of bandage and wrapped it tightly around the wound. Blood seeped through the fabric even while I wrapped it. I've had worse injuries, though. Much worse. This was a mosquito compared to what I've had before.

I left the shelf and headed towards Odd's bed. His friends Aelita, Jeremie, Ulrich, and Yumi were gathered around him, and he was awake.

"So how's my lovable guy doing?" I asked.

"Horrible...but I'm not moaning about it too much." He said, moaning in pain.

"Read a dictionary, Odd. If you look up the definition of 'moaning too much', your picture will be right there." Yumi said.

"Oh, he isn't complaining THAT much." Aelita said.

"I can't blame him, it must hurt." Jeremie chimed in.

"You have no idea." Odd said.

"Hey, he's been shot before, remember?" I pointed out.

"So have I." Odd came back at me.

"...Ok, that's true. But I just got stabbed." I said.

"You ok?" Odd asked.

"No, but I'll live." I replied.

"You have a gift for getting hurt." Ulrich chuckled.

"Yeah, this does seem to happen a lot." I said. That was the understatement of the century.

A few days later I was sitting by Odd's bed. As the days went by and Odd's wound refused to heal, I began to fear the worst. The flesh was turning a sickly green—infection was setting in. If it kept getting worse, we'd have two options: watch him die a slow painful death or turn him into a Shifter, which would involve biting him and having him undergo a week of agony as every molecule in his body was remade...

We had to make a choice. But it was his decision.

And I didn't want to be the one to tell him what his options were.

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**Review please.  
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